It was just before Summertide, the time when the twin planets, Opal and Quake, would orbit closest to their sun, subjecting both -- but Quake in particular -- to vast tidal forces.

And it was to be the most violent Summertide ever, due to the Grand Conjunction of the system's stars and planets, something that happened only every 350,000 years.

Access to the unstable Quake was supposed to be prohibited, but some very insistent travelers were determined to make the trip. Professor Darya Lang, who had made a career studying artifacts left by the long-vanished aliens called the Builders, had a hunch that during this unusal Summertide she might find the Builders themselves. Louis Nenda and the Cecropian Atvar H'sial had their own interests in Quake, and would do anything to get there. And Councilor Julius Graves was hunting murderers -- if they were hiding on Quake, he needed no one's permission to search for them.

Planetary Administrators Hans Rebka and Max Perry had no choice but to go to Quake themselves -- risking their lives to protect the others -- and to learn, just maybe, the secret of Summertide and the Builders .

Book 2. Divergence ( Read by Geoffrey Howard, 2015 )

For millennia, humankind and the other intelligent races have studied the bizarre and unfathomable constructs of the legendary beings known as the Builders. But for all that study, they are still no closer to figuring out who—or what—the Builders have been, or where they have gone. Then, on the world called Quake, in the midst of the violent planetary upheaval that is Summertide, a small group of humans and aliens witness the culmination of all those years of watching and waiting: the planet Quake opens up, and something comes out—and it looks as if, at long last, the discovery of the Builders themselves is at hand.

All her life, Darya Lang has dreamed of finding the Builders, whose artifacts she has single-handedly cataloged for the rest of the universe. Troubleshooter and adventurer Hans Rebka has his own dreams of unraveling the mystery of those artifacts. To Louis Nenda and the Cecropian Atvar H’sial, the Builder artifacts represent a once-in-a-lifetime shot at untold wealth. And close behind them comes the others: Councilor Julius Graves, who does not trust anyone else to make first contact unassisted; the slaves J’merlia and Kallik, who crave only a reunion with their masters; and the embodied computer E.C. Tally, charged with finding out just what the rest are up to.

Book 3. Transcendence ( Read by Geoffrey Howard, 2015 )

The Zardalu are back....

The search for the Builders, the legendary alien race whose unfathomable constructs continue to perplex scholars and explorers alike, has led Builder expert Darya Lang, adventurer Hans Rebka, and treasure hunters Louis Nenda and Atvar H'sial to an unknown Builder artifact far outside the spiral arm. There they find the Zardalu, once the greatest menace ever known to the worlds of the spiral arm, enslaving entire races and exterminating others, guided by the unswerving belief in their own supremacy.

The only chance to eliminate the Zardalu threat is to find them all and wipe them out before they have time to breed back up to strength and once again threaten civilized beings everywhere. But the way will not be easy. Even if they manage to locate the Zardalu, they still have the Builders to deal with. For the closer they get to their quarry, the clearer it becomes that the Zardalu and their world are closely entwined with the fate—and the plans—of the Builders themselves.

Book 4. Convergence ( Read by Geoffrey Howard, 2015 )

Humans first reached out to the stars traveling at a painfully slow sublight crawl - then they found the Bose network, which allowed ships to jump instantaneously from one node in the galactic arm to another. Once in the Network they found the Artifacts: enigmatic structures, millions of years old, left by a vanished race. Incomprehensible to both human and non-human minds, the Artifacts seemingly defy natural law.

Now, after millions of years, a new Artifact has appeared and the other Artifacts are showing strange behavioral changes. When a motley crew of human and alien scientists and adventurers set out to examine still more Artifacts, they should have considered the fact that some changes are more dangerous than others. . . .